


Driven to Extremes

by involuntaryorange



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Blizzards & Snowstorms, First Time, M/M, Sauna, Skinny Dipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 03:07:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5811325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/involuntaryorange/pseuds/involuntaryorange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for kate_the_reader and scribblscrabbl's Flash Freeze Fic challenge. Thanks so much for coming up with this awesome idea, guys!</p>
<p>This fic was, unsurprisingly, inspired by the sauna bit of "Driven to Extremes." Hence the title, which also works for this fic.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Driven to Extremes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for kate_the_reader and scribblscrabbl's Flash Freeze Fic challenge. Thanks so much for coming up with this awesome idea, guys!
> 
> This fic was, unsurprisingly, inspired by the sauna bit of "Driven to Extremes." Hence the title, which also works for this fic.

***

“What the fuck is on your head?”

Eames, who has just emerged from his room, looks upward as though he might be able to see the top of his head. “What?”

“That… thing.”

“My hat?”

“Calling that _thing_ a hat is an insult to hats everywhere,” Arthur says. “It looks like a bell fell onto your head.”

“I’ll have you know this is an authentic Siberian boiled wool _banya_  hat.”

“You look like that character from Fat Albert. What was his name?”

“Make fun all you want,” Eames says as he grabs a towel from the cabin’s small linen closet, “but you’ll be begging for a hat of your own once we’re in the water.”

Arthur snaps his fingers and points at Eames in recollection. “Dumb Donald!” After a pause, he adds, “Wait, once we’re in the what now?”

“The water,” Eames replies, as though he’s explaining something patently obvious.

“What water?”

“The lake down the hill, by the lodge.”

“Why would I be going into the lake?”

“So that you can enjoy the sauna afterward.”

“It’s below zero outside. _Fahrenheit_ ,” Arthur adds when Eames opens his mouth. “There’s also a blizzard, in case you forgot why we’re currently stuck in this godforsaken tundra instead of on airplanes headed somewhere warm.” Dom and Ariadne had been lucky enough to catch the last uncancelled flight to Paris, but Arthur and Eames had stayed behind to clean up the warehouse — well, Arthur had stayed behind to clean up the warehouse, and Eames had apparently stayed behind to watch Arthur clean and make snarky comments. By the time they’d finished their respective tasks, the airport had already shut down.

“And we might as well make the most of it!”

“Right, and for me that means drinking this questionable bottle of vodka, climbing under three blankets, and sleeping for sixteen hours.”

“You have no sense of adventure, Arthur,” Eames complains.

“Isn’t the lake frozen over?”

“They break up the ice so that people can go swimming.”

“And I return to my earlier question: _why would anyone go swimming_?”

“It’s good for you.”

“You know, weirdly, my doctor has never recommended going for a casual dip in the Arctic circle.”

“And clearly you pay close attention to your doctor’s health suggestions,” Eames says, looking pointedly at the spot on Arthur’s arm where a Somnacin drip had been attached mere hours ago. “Look, if you don’t think you can _handle_ it…”

Arthur rolls his eyes; he knows when he’s being baited. He shrugs with exaggerated regret. “As much as I’d _love_ to reenact the end of Titanic, I’m afraid I didn’t pack a swimsuit.”

“Who said anything about swimsuits?” Eames grins devilishly. “But if you’re, y’know, shy about these things, then by all means stay behind.” And then he’s pulling on his parka, tossing the towel over his shoulder, and heading out the door, letting in a gust of snow before it swings shut behind him.

Arthur gapes at the rough-hewn door for a moment before he huffs in offense. Questioning his toughness is one thing, but he’ll be damned if Eames thinks he’s _embarrassed about his body_.

“Oh, it is _on_ ,” he says to the empty room.

***

By the time Arthur arrives at the lake, coat hastily donned and towel in tow, Eames is down to his boxers. His shadow is cast long and dim across the snow by the small LED lantern next to his pile of clothes. He turns at the sound of Arthur trudging through the snow. “Changed your mind?”

Arthur shrugs casually. “Didn’t want to miss the chance to see you shrieking like a little girl.”

At that, Eames strips off his underwear — Arthur carefully keeps his eyes above nipple level, despite the fact that it’s so dark he probably couldn’t see anything anyway — and shouts “Last one in’s a rotten egg!” before running into the water with a joyful whoop.

“Seriously?” Arthur says, scrambling to disrobe. “Are we back in elementary school?”

“Admit it, Arthur, you were the rotten egg a lot as a child.” Eames’s voice is thin and tense, stretched taut by the cold.

“If by that you mean I didn’t drop everything and run off just because everyone else was doing it,” Arthur says as he toes off his shoes, trying not to gasp audibly as his bare feet touch the snow, “then yes, I was.” He unbuckles his belt, and before he can think twice about it, he drops his trousers and his underwear in one movement and follows Eames into the lake.

The water is so cold it steals the breath from his lungs. A strangled noise emerges unbidden from Arthur’s throat, followed by a slightly-more-bidden “Jesus _motherfucking_ Christ this is fucking cold.”

“I can’t hear you very well; my bollocks have retreated so far into my body I think they’re blocking my ears,” Eames hollers, splashing around.

Arthur’s skin feels like it’s on fire. “Why are we doing this?” he shouts. Eames is less than ten feet away, but the sounds of water and wind threaten to drown out anything less than yelling. Arthur picks up a chunk of ice that’s bumped against his shoulder and throws it into the dark.

“Because we can!” Eames shouts back.

“How long are we supposed to stay in here?”

In the faint light, Arthur can see Eames tilt his head back and look at the moon. “Oh, I think it’s probably been long enough.”

“Thank fucking Christ,” Arthur says, already splashing his way back to the shore, Eames at his heels.

There’s shivering and laughing as they towel off as quickly as humanly possible, interspersed with profanity-laden outbursts directed at the weather, numb limbs, Siberia in general, and the impossibility of getting dressed in the midst of a blizzard when you can’t really feel your fingers. Eventually Eames just wraps his towel around his waist and urges Arthur to do the same; then he grabs Arthur by the elbow — rolling his eyes good-naturedly when Arthur insists on stopping to gather up all of his articles of clothing — and they run toward the warm light coming from the lodge.

***

The sauna door lets out an enticing plume of steam when Eames wrenches it open, and as they tumble inside it’s a bit like entering the mouth of an enormous beast. The shock of warmth makes Arthur’s skin tingle, pinpricks of pain where snowflakes cling to him. His towel is already stiff with ice.

The sauna isn’t empty; there’s a large Mongolian man sitting on a bench with his eyes closed. Arthur and Eames giggle and shush each other like middle-schoolers at a sleepover as they lay down their towels and stake out their own spots on the benches.

Arthur sits back and closes his own eyes, letting the heat slowly bring sensation back into his extremities. Outside he had felt brittle and battered, but now he feels like he’s wrapped up in cotton wool. The air is thick, and breathing it is like taking a drag on a cigarette. He loses track of time for a bit, inhaling and exhaling, letting sweat replace shivers.

After some time, the Mongolian man stands up and leave, letting in a blast of cold air that startles Arthur back to alertness. He feels like liquid, like he’s been poured onto his bench and is slowly seeping into the woodwork. He turns his head slightly to check on Eames.

Eames is lying face-down on his towel, head resting on his folded arms, still wearing that idiotic hat. Arthur opens his mouth to make a comment about it, but his mouth snaps shut again when his eyes trail further down Eames’s body.

You wouldn’t guess it from the cut of his horrific pleated trousers, but Eames’s ass is a _work of art_. Arthur says a silent thank-you to whichever deities have kept it tattoo-free; to mar that canvas with ink would be like spray-painting graffiti on Michelangelo’s David.

Whose ass, incidentally, doesn’t even come close to measuring up to Eames’s. Which is _spectacular_. Arthur wants to _bite_ it.

Thankfully he’s still sane enough to recognize that biting one’s coworkers, on the ass or elsewhere, isn’t acceptable human behavior, so he limits himself to looking. _Eames won’t know_ , he rationalizes to himself, unsure of whether that makes it less creepy or more.

Eames’s thighs are also quite nice, muscular but not too bulky. His back is rising and falling slowly with his breath; the way his arms are positioned makes his shoulder blades jut out, emphasizing the definition in his upper back and shoulders.

Arthur briefly considers setting fire to Eames’s entire wardrobe. He already knew Eames’s clothes were tacky, but now that he can see what they’re hiding, they’re frankly a crime against humanity.

“I’d like to turn over; are you done ogling my arse?”

Arthur snaps his eyes guiltily to the ceiling, even though there’s no way Eames could possibly be watching him right now. By the time he realizes Eames is joking, too much time has passed. Nonetheless, Arthur clears his throat and says, with as much sarcasm as he can muster, “By all means.”

Sometime between the end of that utterance and Eames starting to stir, Arthur realizes: he’s hard. He’s hard and he’s naked and there’s pretty much nothing he can do to hide his erection that wouldn’t just scream “ _Hello I’m hiding an erection_.”

He briefly wishes he were still outside in the snow. He considers making a run for it. Ultimately, he decides that humiliation is marginally better than freezing to death. He stares at the wood-paneled wall and pretends to be sitting casually, and if his fingertips are actually digging into his thighs, well, Eames is probably too far away to notice that.

Eames grunts as he shuffles around on the bench. Arthur can hear him rearranging his towel, can hear his sweat-slick skin moving against itself, and when he can’t stand the suspense any longer he steals a quick glance at Eames out of the corner of his eye. Rather, he _intends_ for it to be a quick glance, but just as he looks at Eames, Eames’s gaze moves upward, from where it had clearly been settled on his crotch — _fuck, fuck, fuck_ — and their eyes lock together. Eames’s expression is unreadable, and Arthur is pinned in place waiting for Eames to make a comment, but instead Eames lies back down and pulls his hat down over his eyes.

_So we’re taking the “pretend nothing happened” approach_ , Arthur thinks. _I can work with that_. He closes his eyes and tells himself that his face is burning because of the heat.

***

“Do you have a thing for fat Mongolian men?” Eames asks a few minutes later, startling Arthur out of the somewhat panicked reverie he’d fallen into.

“What? No.”

“Hmm.” Eames is quiet for a moment, but when Arthur looks carefully over at him, he can see that Eames’s eyes are bright and watching Arthur from under the brim of his hat. “Saunas?”

“What about them?” Arthur looks away again, not wanting to witness Eames’s scrutiny.

“Do you have a thing for them? Maybe you had a formative sexual experience in one?”

“Seriously, Eames?”

“I’m just trying to rule out alternative explanations. So it’s me, then?”

Arthur wishes he could _actually_ melt into the floorboards instead of just feeling like it. “Why are you doing this? Can’t I just be humiliated in peace?” He knows he’s whining, but he thinks a bit of whining is justified, given the circumstances.

“Darling.” Eames’s voice is suddenly much closer than it was before. Arthur looks up in surprise to find him sitting a scant three feet away on Arthur’s bench. “Look at me.”

“I _am_ looking at you,” Arthur says petulantly.

“No,” Eames says, gesturing downward with his chin. “ _Look_ at me.”

Arthur moves his eyes down, slowly, giving Eames time to object in case he’s misunderstood. But Eames’s torso is only so long, and sooner than Arthur would like, his gaze reaches Eames’s cock.

Which is hard, arching up toward his stomach.

“Say it was me,” Eames says, sounding unexpectedly desperate.

“Of course it was you,” Arthur says, confused and turned on and, if he’s being completely honest, a little bit scared.

Eames gusts out a breath and kisses him, which takes care of the scared bit, amplifies the turned on bit, and maintains the confused bit at a constant level. His hands weave into Arthur’s hair as he tilts his head for a better angle. Arthur turns to fully face Eames, brings one palm to Eames’s chest and grasps a hip with the other, lets Eames tease his lips open and nips at him in response. He runs a thumb absent-mindedly along the crease of Eames’s hip, back and forth, noticing how Eames’s hands tense up and his kisses deepen.

Everything is warm and wet: the air, their skin, their mouths, the sounds of their breath. Everything bleeds together dizzyingly.

When Eames maneuvers Arthur to be straddling his lap, Arthur takes the opportunity to catch his breath. He looks at Eames, at the lost look in his eyes, at the beard he’s been growing since arriving in Siberia three weeks ago, at the sweat dripping down his temple, at the… at the…

“I’m sorry. I can’t do this—”

“Right.” Eames’s expression shifts almost imperceptibly from naked need to studied insouciance, and it makes Arthur hurt, so he hastens to clarify.

“— _while you’re wearing that hat_ , Eames.”

What replaces the studied insouciance isn’t that same naked need; it’s something just as honest but more tender, tinged by apology and slight embarrassment. Eames whips the hat off his head and tosses it across the sauna; Arthur follows its trajectory with amusement.

“You missed the coals. Unfortunately.”

“Shut it,” Eames murmurs, twisting a damp lock of Arthur’s hair around his finger.

“Really? That’s what you want me to do with my mouth right now?”

Eames gives a gentle but not _too_ gentle tug on the lock of hair. “Cheeky bastard.”

“Cheeky bastard who’s about to suck your brain out through your dick, so a little respect wouldn’t go amiss.”

“Cheeky bastard, _sir_ ,” Eames says, raising an eyebrow.

Arthur considers replying, but decides that sucking Eames’s brain out through his dick is more important than having the last word.

**Author's Note:**

> Now go read all the other Flash Freeze fics, because they're AMAZING.


End file.
